The present invention relates to vehicle seat covers, and to vehicle seats including such covers.
More particularly, the invention relates to a flexible cover for covering flexible padding belonging to a vehicle seat, said cover having an inside face for facing the padding and an outside face designed to be visible to a user of the seat, said cover presenting a certain thickness between its inside and outside faces, and having at least one conductive thread fixed to its inside face.
Document EP-A-0 347 969 describes an example of such a seat cover in which the conductive thread (specifically an electric heater wire) is heat-sealed under the cover. That type of conductive thread fixing presents the advantage of being invisible from the outside of the seat. However the process whereby the conductive thread is assembled under the cover is complex and requires tooling that is expensive.
A particular object of the present invention is to mitigate that drawback without losing the advantage of the invisible way in which the conductive thread is fixed under the cover.
To this end, according to the invention, in a cover of the kind in question, the conductive thread is fixed to the cover by at least one flexible assembly thread forming a non-through seam that is not visible on the outside face of the cover, the assembly thread penetrating into the thickness of the cover and passing around the conductive thread, thereby holding said conductive thread against the inside face of the cover.
By means of these dispositions, the conductive thread can be assembled against the inside face of the cover merely by using conventional tooling for sewing, which tooling is easy to use and inexpensive.
It should be observed that the conductive thread mentioned above is generally and preferably constituted by an electrically-conductive metal wire, but that where appropriate it could be constituted by a light-conducting optical fiber.
In preferred embodiments of the invention, it is possible to use one or more of the following dispositions:
the seam comprises a single assembly thread sewn using a chain stitch;
the conductive thread is an electrically-conductive metal wire;
the conductive thread has an insulating outer sheath;
the assembly thread is electrically conductive and forms a shield around the conductive thread;
the conductive thread is interposed between two electrically conductive walls which are assembled together with the conductive thread against the inside face of the cover by said assembly thread;
said two electrically conductive walls are conductive grids; and
the conductive thread is of a diameter lying in the range 0.5 millimeters (mm) to 5 mm.
The invention also provides a vehicle seat comprising flexible padding covered by a cover as defined above, with the inside face of the cover being placed against the flexible padding.